These guidelines were written on December 2, 2022 and updated in 2023, by Sunny Consolvo, Niklas Elmqvist, Philippe Palanque, and Leysia Palen.
The ACM SIGCHI awards, which are presented each year at the CHI conference, recognize a broad set of important contributions to the SIGCHI community. Awardees are selected each year by their respective subcommittees, which report to the SIGCHI Executive Committee.
Common among the awards is that candidates who are considered are SIGCHI members who are nominated by other members of the SIGCHI community (i.e., candidates do not self-nominate). Nominations for most of the awards include a brief summary of why the nominee is suited for the award as well as external endorsements. Because it can be challenging to know what should go into a nomination or endorsement, this document attempts to provide some guidelines for these documents.
The different SIGCHI awards are summarized here and the nomination process can be found here. Naturally, each individual award category has criteria or recommendations that are specific to that award. Below, we first list general guidelines that apply to all award categories and then discuss guidelines specific to each category.
General Guidelines
Keep the following guidelines in mind for nominations to all categories of SIGCHI awards:
Length: Summaries of why the nominee is suited for the award should be brief. They are typically no more than 1,000 words (i.e., approximately two pages). Summaries that exceed 1,000 words are likely to be disadvantageous to the candidate. Keep in mind that award subcommittees often have heavy reviewing loads.
Self-contained: Do not assume that subcommittee members will review additional materials you may point to in your summary.
Focus on the contribution: Award reviewers want to understand the candidate’s contribution to the entire field of HCI in all its scale and diversity. Do your best to contextualize the candidate’s work in the big picture of HCI research.
Mind your audience: Each awards subcommittee is small and will therefore not have in-depth expertise across the entire field of HCI. Ensure that your summary explains the candidate’s work in sufficiently general terms that a competent HCI researcher can understand without being an expert in the candidate’s particular subfield.
Not just numbers: In most cases, individuals have to have published at SIGCHI conferences to be eligible for SIGCHI awards, but there is no requirement and no ranking merely based on their number of publications. Therefore, arguments based solely on the number of publications a candidate has at CHI, for example, are less effective than more qualitative arguments. For guidance on how to formulate qualitative arguments for impact, see the DORA agreement.
Never lose sight of the human: Our field features the world “human” in its title, so be sure to provide the human perspective on the candidate’s work in your summary. How has the candidate’s work helped real people with real problems?
Evidence of impact: Any evidence you can provide on how the candidate’s work has influenced society, other researchers, or stakeholders will help the candidate. Again, going beyond mere numbers (such as citation counts) is strongly advised.
Activity in SIGCHI: With a few exceptions (notably the Lifetime Practice award), most SIGCHI awards require that participants be active in SIGCHI. Furthermore, for the more senior awards, demonstrating a candidate’s engagement in SIGCHI over the years is likely to bolster their case.
Differentiate: The SIGCHI awards are prestigious and quite competitive. Be clear about what makes your candidate particularly qualified for the award.
Lifetime Research Award
The Lifetime Research Award is presented to individuals for outstanding contributions to the study of HCI. This award recognizes the very best, most fundamental, and influential research contributions. It is awarded for a lifetime of innovation and leadership.
We recommend that nominations for this award clearly address the award criteria (listed here). It is often helpful to include a paragraph/section of your summary for each criterion, and clearly state which criterion the paragraph/section is addressing. When possible, we recommend including specific examples of how your candidate meets each criterion.
Lifetime Practice & Lifetime Service Awards
The Lifetime Practice Award is presented to individuals for outstanding contributions to the practice and understanding of HCI. This award recognizes the very best and most influential applications of HCI. It is awarded for a lifetime of innovation and leadership. The Lifetime Service Award is presented to individuals who have contributed to the growth and success of SIGCHI in a variety of capacities. This award is for extended service to the community at large over a number of years.
There is no strict requirement that nominees for these two awards be active in SIGCHI (though they must be current SIGCHI members). However, including the contributions they’ve made to SIGCHI are always helpful to a candidate’s case. There is also no requirement that they publish in SIGCHI conferences, or even have an academic publication record. That said, we offer the following advice for preparing nominations to the Lifetime Practice and Lifetime Service awards.
For the Lifetime Practice Award, please keep in mind the awards criteria, and specifically address them in your nomination. It is often helpful to include a paragraph/section of your summary for each criterion, and clearly state which criterion the paragraph/section is addressing. We recommend including specific examples of how your candidate meets each criterion when possible.
For the Lifetime Service Award, beyond listing positions with start-time and end-time, demonstrating vision and excellence in the activity performed while holding the position is key.
Outstanding Dissertation Award
First awarded in 2018, the Outstanding Dissertation Award celebrates the excellence and diversity of Ph.D. dissertation work in HCI around the world. Here are some unique guidelines for preparing nominations for this award:
Contextualize the contribution: The nominator and the referees are often better placed than students to explain the contribution in relation to the rest of the field.
Why is this work novel and unique?: Explaining how the work is different from existing well-known HCI research—especially any that has already been awarded in prior years—helps the award subcommittee better appreciate the uniqueness of the work.
Evidence of impact: A Ph.D. dissertation is often among the first academic work that a person ever produces, and most of it is going to be hot off the press. This means that assessing its impact can be difficult. In this case, it may be useful to speculate how the work may have an impact in the future.
Discuss the work, not the candidate: Limit your letter to discussing the dissertation. There is no need to sing the praises of the candidate or talk about their personal attributes. The award is given in recognition of outstanding Ph.D. dissertations, not outstanding Ph.D.s.
SIGCHI Academy
The SIGCHI Academy is an honorary group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of HCI. These are leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the disciplines and/or industry, and led the research and/or innovation in HCI. The Lifetime Research and Lifetime Practice award subcommittees work together to determine who will be inducted into the SIGCHI Academy each year. We offer the following advice for preparing nominations to the SIGCHI Academy.
Clearly address each criterion: Specifically address each award criterion (listed here). In your summary, it’s often helpful to include a clearly labeled section (usually 1-2 paragraphs long) for each criterion. If you find you can only make a strong case for one or two of the criteria, that could be signaling that your candidate doesn’t meet the criteria for the SIGCHI Academy, at least not yet.
When addressing the candidate’s impact on the field of HCI or influence on the work of others, please be clear about how they have impacted the field or others, not their potential for impact.
When addressing the candidate’s participation in the SIGCHI community, you’re welcome to describe their range of community participation, but the criterion specifies their participation in the SIGCHI community.
Specific examples/evidence: Include specific examples/evidence of how your candidate meets each criterion when possible.
When addressing the candidate’s impact on the field of HCI or influence on the work of others, please be clear about the reach of their impact or influence, including beyond their institution.
Relatedly, if a candidate’s primary impact on the field is related to their teaching, advising, and/or mentoring, it’s important to provide evidence that clearly distinguishes what they’ve done from others to make them a leader of the field.
Go beyond the numbers: We strongly recommend that you clearly state a candidate's impact or influence beyond numbers like their citation count, h-index, or number of publications. It is rare for numbers to set a candidate apart from the other candidates under consideration.
Information on Selection Process
To ensure rigor and integrity of the awards process, and to do so in a way that is open, transparent, equitable, and inclusive, our subcommittees consist of members who are well-recognized within SIGCHI (such as past awardees), have extensive experience in the SIGCHI community, and are committed to SIGCHI values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We use the following guidelines, implemented in 2021, to ensure that SIGCHI Awards uplift community members in line with SIGCHI values:
We aim to ensure more voices are heard during deliberation: The best way to do this is to ensure the awards committee represents the breadth of HCI community members. Diverse teams ensure that publicly known harms are brought to light during discussions.
Due diligence phase: Nominators will need to attest to the candidate's adherence to the ACM Code of Ethics and ACM's Core Values in the nomination form. The selection process will also aim to answer the question: Has this person publicly engaged in activities which embody hateful, discriminatory action? This includes a formal search in the ACM’s violation database for those who have incurred ACM sanctions precluding them from being able to receive an award. This also includes an Internet search and reading through recent tweets or blog posts to exhaust publicly available information to the extent possible.
Be comfortable with not honoring someone: No one is entitled to an award. “Dr. XYZ is renowned for their work but did far too much damage to the HCI community to get the award” is a perfectly sensible narrative.
Nobody is perfect: The task is not to find awardees who have never made a mistake, nor ever angered anyone that they have power over, but instead identify those who have abused their power over others. However, racist, xenophobic, sexist, transphobic, homophibic, abelist, or other biased remarks and actions that are publicly stated or have been verified by the ACM (e.g. through its harassment investigation process) can be used in decisions.
See our Awards Updates page for further details on updates to our awards program implemented in the past few years.